I am finally surfacing from the first half a year working at the new garden: officially, 'the Southeastern Horticultural Society's Community Learning Garden at Edgewood,' but known in the neighborhood simply as 'the garden,' or more specifically, 'the garden across from the red store.'I have a lot of catching up to do. A semester of after school programs, installation of a water catchment system involving repurposed utility poles and highway signs, starting a garden from scratch, and neighbor relations.
I have little to no budget for programs, so we had to get a little extra creative for fall craft projects this year. One thing we have in abundance in Edgewood is kudzu. Much maligned for turning roadside forests into emerald oceans of vines with the hulking monsters of overcome trees, kudzu is a treasured resource in its home territory across the sea. Like poison ivy, it thrives in disturbed areas. Originally imported to prevent roadside erosion as highways started to creep across the South, kudzu reached its tendrils much farther than its keepers ever intended. Growing up to a foot a day, and free from the confines of pests and conditions that keep it in check in its native Japan, kudzu seems to be taking over the South.
Edgewood boasts some acres of unbuilt, unkempt lots where kudzu has made itself comfortable, covering trees, tires, mattresses and the other usual urban detritus. A field recently cleaned of kudzu unveiled a giant James Brown bobble head doll, old paint buckets and a squeegee. The long ropy vines reach up into the trees and run over the ground, thick and flexible and, we discovered, perfect for wreaths.
Kudzu is a prized basket-making vine, easy to work with, plentiful, and durable. IMAGE afterschool program helped harvest long vines, pulling them down from the trees and yanking them up from the earth. Dragging our harvest behind us like strands of seaweed we shaped the vines into wreaths and decorated them with holly leaves from Edgewood Courts Apartments and dollar store ribbons.
Not only useful for holiday decorations, kudzu is used medicinally to help overcome alcoholism, and its spring shoots, flowers and roots are all edible. Kudzu is one of a host of plants from other countries that most people lable "invasive," or "invaders." Or sometime "aggressive," "exotic," or, more generously, "introduced." Common in Edgewood yards, along with kudzu, are privet and English ivy.
A lot of energy and resources goes into controlling these species as part of 'restoration ecology.' The interesting thing about this is that there is no natural point to which to restore a natural system--systems evolve forward in time; they don't go back to a previous point. So by pulling out all the 'invasive' species, a restoration project may temporarily (until humans stop maintaining the restoration process) increase biodiversity, it slows down the system's own process of working toward equilibrium with a new set of species.
To borrow a phrase from Bobby Wilson, I said all that to say this: using conventional wisdom, Edgewood is a resource-poor neighborhood. That conventional set of lenses looks out at Edgewood and sees overgrown lots, trash, youth engaging in crime, and a shifting population trying to create a safe community. However, shifting perspectives, Edgewood offers up more useful treasures than sun-bleached plastic effigies of James Brown.
In addition to craft materials, the invasive species' provide healthy fodder to the neighborhood's small flock of goats, converting kudzu and privet into milk and meat. The garden across from the red store, as it gathers purpose, provides a community gathering spot as well as a place to learn, grow food, and spark the imagination of a neighborhood trying to become a community.
With the scent of pie wafting tantalizingly from the Edward pie factory, Edgewood even smells like hope and home on baking days. I'm not saying all we need is rose-tinted glasses and apple pie to make all the challenges disappear, I'm just thinking that a shift in perspective will help in working out creative solutions using the resources at hand. If life gives you kudzu, then there's nothing to do but make wreaths.
